Took down a season 2 championship, going 5-0, with a version of this. It is both prepaid and katman
I swapped in the corroder at the last minute (30 minutes before tournament start), dropping a parasite in the process. It worked out well, considering I was tearing through wraparounds and ice walls with it, but I almost feel like I could use inti instead and save myself the influence. A single legwork is tough to work with and I can see why people are trying to fit in two copies.
I only ended up playing a single atman all day. That being said, I’m thinking of dropping down to a single atman to accommodate a cyber-cypher. I can see why people are moving away from atman.
Even with Jinteki’s archive traps, I still think datasuckers are important. They enable instant parasite-ing which is really good versus tsurugi, komainu, anything behind inazuma, ichi, etc… I used to run 3x shutdown in my crim decks, so maybe that’s why I’m a big fan of this, but there’s a ton of ice that I don’t even want triggering once and I feel like just having ability to nuke down any ice is too strong to cut.
If you read the thread related to Alex’s review of H&P, you’ll find that I’ve been saying this since day one, with most people disagreeing with me at various intensities
I played a few games with the suggested changes for more legworks and lucky finds, I’ve really felt the pain of not being able to sucker+site something problematic.
Maybe it’s my playstyle, but it seems half-in half-out to me, without suckers I’ve just been parasiting rototurrets and eli’s,
That’s pretty much how I feel. Using parasite without datasuckers mean you have to rely on Deus X (or pay quite a bit to get through with femme) to survive Komainu and Tsurugi, both of which I find are very popular at the moment.
Speaking of Deus X, is everyone finding 2-of really necessary? Maybe it’s because I’m still running suckers and am a bit cramped for memory in the mid game (running either cybersolutions / toolbox / dino, so only 1 +MU card in the deck) but I only have 1-of Deus X and I haven’t even installed it recently. I usually just toss it and figure I can bring it back with clone chip if I really need to.
I’m also a huge fan of 3x Clone Chip, probably once again because I like my instant-speed mid-run parasites and also because of my 1-of atman that is usually sitting the heap. The list @Lysander posted only has 2, and I don’t really see why a 2nd Deus X / 2nd Test Run is better than the 3rd chip.
I am still on edge about LARLA, and I’ll have to actually keep a log of how many times I play it. I currently think that it is needed in the deck as a reset in case you do have to go super late due to unlucky accesses, but that being said I definitely never played it during my latest tournament and I can’t remember the last time I played it during a casual game.
It’s the same reason that 2 parasites are better than 1. It’s a choice you make once you have a good idea of what the metagame will be before an event.
Jinteki is huge on OCTGN right now, but from what I can remember OCTGN has always essentially been a jinteki simulator.
Love this deck. Maybe Nerve Agent over the 1-of Legwork?
Still prefer Legwork I think due to PPVP and SOT, but if you find lots of CI in the Meta and need more HQ pressure, NA is an equal influence semi-permanent alternative.
It’s funny you mention Nerve Agent, because that’s actually what I cut for the 1-of Legwork .
I think Nerve Agent is really good, but it is much slower than Legwork. You have to make 3 runs on HQ with Nerve Agent out before it becomes as good as a Legwork, and so the corp has a ton of time to see it coming. One of my favorite turns during the tournament was when the corp had 3 credits after rezzing ice on HQ, so I SMC into corroder, go in and see nothing of value. I then legwork’d and stole an agenda and hit a snare (but he has 3 credits so )
You also have to have the memory for NA, which is really awkward when you only have a single +MU card in the deck. The rig is usually some combination of sucker/sucker/parasite/atman/corroder and so it’s a tight fit. And while I used to be a big fan of baiting the corp into wasting their turn purging, the central-only meta makes it so datasuckers token can become really sparse. Giving them another reason to purge tokens in this deck is not something I am looking for.
The one thing I do miss is the ability to SMC tutor for NA. The 1-of Legwork is good when it shows up, and you can always SOT for it if you really need to put the pressure on HQ, but it is pretty inconsistent. NA on the other hand can give you an edge on-demand whenever you feel like the corp is piling agendas in HQ. In most of my games, corps recognized that I wasn’t a siphon shaper and so would keep HQ relatively open (1/2 ice) in favour of protecting RnD, so I could definitely see exploiting that weakness more consistently being super-valuable.
I could be wrong but I believe that you access 2 cards with your first access after playing Nerve Agent. Because the run is successful simultaneously with deciding to access, right (compared to say DRT which specifically triggers after a successful run is complete)? I saw this happen at a Store Championship and nobody seemed to cry foul about it (albeit with a Medium). Granted, Nerve Agent is still slower than Legwork, and takes MU, but not having to do one vanilla run before getting multi-access is a significant boon.
You’re right about the timing, but it’s an extra card for “each virus counter after the first”. So unless you have Grimoire out, you still only see one the first time.
When I first started building Kate PPVP a few months back, I went with NA. However, MU became tight. Legwork is a nice sub. Would be great to fit in a Planned Assault to go find it.
NA and Medium are easy to remember: access cards up to the number of tokens on them.
@Chill84@lopert I’ll do my best to justify my most recent changes, dropping Datasuckers and a Parasite and adding a Deus X, though take it with a grain of salt, as I think in the current card pool, any changes made are more to adjust for the ever-changing Meta than to improve the deck itself. That being said, here are my reasons:
●Nothing is worse than using a SMC/TR on Datasucker, so you’re at the mercy of your draw. We’re already forced to mulligan for PPVP and SMC; I’d much rather make the rest of the deck as consistent as possible.
●Parasite/Datasucker is best against Jinteki and worst against HB; would you agree? I’m not remotely concerned about non-glacier Jinteki, but I am worried about glacier and HB (and Ajar’s OCTGN stats support this). Being forced to break or use Deus X when hitting a Komainu is the worst case scenario for not having Datasuckers, which I still see as manageable since we can use the lone Parasite on it afterwards. Perhaps I’m overly concerned about HB here.
●Datasucker/Parasite is almost always great, but let’s not forget they don’t necessarily belong in every deck. I see them in the context of “win more” in this deck. If I’m doing well and hitting hard and I drew them early, they’re second to none. However I’d much rather have that third Lucky Find and second Legwork to make every game more consistent rather than a third of my games blowouts.
Or maybe I’m full of crap It’s hard for me to tell sometimes. Thoughts?
@Lysander I am curious what you have to say in response to my previous post in this thread ( 1. I don’t like the way the deck plays if you don’t hit an early PPVP 2. Caduceus in NBN:MN is a problem with Femme as the only Killer).
I must admit, hitting a Caduceus isn’t ideal against NBN. Typically the ice isn’t so terribly taxing that pumping Femme once is going to kill me, but yeah it does suck. I try to Parasite it as often as I can, especially since there’s very little else I want to Parasite more against NBN.
The PPVP dilemma is actually much simpler in my opinion. The only matchups I desperately need PPVP early are glacier, and even then it’s manageable. With three Lucky Find and Hedge Fund, I get pretty damn far against NBN, Jinteki, and some Weyland. In any game that I’ve drawn PPVP late, I’d simply stockpile Same Old Thing and use them on Lucky Find, which grants me 9c over 4 clicks.
If you have a Femme out then paying 4 is acceptable, though hardly ideal. My bigger concern is how it forces a Femme in the first place. Paying 9 so that you can pay 4 to get through Caduceus sucks, and you’ve only got 2 Test Run 2 Scavenge. I’ve found myself Parasiting them as well, but it always feels like it takes forever and the corp feels no pressure in the meantime.
Don’t forget that Kate has a Link. It is possible to trace through Caduceus, which costs just one more than breaking with Femme, assuming the corp only uses their MN credits to boost.
Caduceus has always been the most annoying ICE deckbuilding-wise imo. If it weren’t for Cad, Ninja + Parasite deals with everything common remarkably well. The low str Sentries like Komainu are killed by 'Site, while everything bigger is broken efficiently by Ninja. Maybe it’d be a good idea to run Ninja + Parasite + Link (Dysons, perhaps?).
Perhaps the build, built around the fixed Anarch breakers, that won Phoenix is more ideal? It runs the best Caddy killer: Mimic.
Granted, he wasn’t running Lucky Find, IIRC, which seems odd. Guess he relied on the efficiency of the breakers, which Andy has been doing with them for some time.
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